Quote Originally Posted by NervousSubject View Post
For context...this is how it started this month. I was mowing my lawn to mulch in leaves a little more than a week ago, and I saw this thing flying low to the ground...I can't really tell what it was, it didn't appear to be a bird...It was fluttering kind of like a butterfly, but I'm not sure...I didn't get a good enough look at it. It flew to my left and I lost sight of it and never saw it again. God, almost ten days later, this is hitting me so hard. The scariest part is not knowing for sure what the hell that thing flying near me was. I can only somewhat mentally picture it in my head...It looked like it was white, but also maybe a little brown-ish. It was fluttering, kinda like how you'd expect a butterfly would, but it didn't look like it had black wings.. I dont think it touched me, I was wearing long sweatpants and a sweater.

Normally, I'd think it might have been a leaf fluttering in the wind, but it seemed like it was alive.
I know that this sounds crazy, but I can't shake the thought that it was a sick and confused rabid bat that was out during the daytime and in November because it was sick.
Going through a bit of a rabies thing myself at the moment and I saw someone suggest something further up in this thread that has been helping me, which is actually learning true factual things about bats not pertaining to rabies. It's really been helping me rationalize and realize that I make a lot of HA assumptions for a girl who really knows next to nothing about bats. For example assuming that bats are even active at this time of year in the Northeast US, you said you're in Long Island, I'm in New Jersey (so we're like state neighbors sort of!) and I'm assuming as its been quite cold here it's been quite cold there as well, in our neck of the woods bats start hibernating in Mid-October and don't come back out again from hibernation until the end of march, remember that bats eat bugs and when temps are staying between 20-45 degrees there aren't a heck of a lot of bugs around for them to eat, I seriously highly doubt what you saw was a bat, I hope that you're able to get some ease from this fear, I'm trying really hard to beat it this time and I really hope that you can too